The Florida Senate Ethics and Elections Committee recently issued a report, suggesting new election laws for 2011.  One of the ideas is to impose a prior affiliation requirement on independent candidates.  No one could be an independent candidate if he or she had been a member of a qualified party during the previous 18 months before the election.  This idea is prompted by hostility toward Governor Charlie Crist, who became an independent candidate earlier this year even while he was still a registered Republican.

On October 20, U.S. District Court Judge James A. Teilborg of Arizona granted an injunction, forbidding Coconino County election officials from interfering with one particular voter, or any voter, who wants to wear a Tea Party T-shirt to the polls on November 2, 2010.  The voter who brought the lawsuit had been told she had to cover up her shirt, when she voted at the August 2010 primary and also when she voted at a local election in May.  She sued on September 20.  See this story.  The case is Wickberg v Owens, cv10-8177-PHX.

Although the state law against electioneering at the polls stands, the judge construed the law to only include clothing that says something specific about a candidate or a ballot measure that is on the ballot at that election.  There is no Tea Party listed on the Arizona ballot.

On October 20, the Constitution, Green and Libertarian Parties of Pennsylvania filed this 39-page brief in the Third Circuit.  The case is Constitution Party of Pennsylvania v Cortes, 10-3205.  The issues are the Pennsylvania challenge system that subjects minor parties and independent candidates to the risk of paying up to $100,000 if they submit a petition that is insufficient; Pennsylvania’s abysmal record of counting and tallying write-ins; and the state’s threshold for a party to be ballot-qualified without petitioning.  That threshold is that it have registration membership of 15% of the state total, a hurdle so high that if the same law existed in Utah, the Democratic Party would not be on the ballot; and if it existed in the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, or Rhode Island, the Republican Party would not be ballot-qualified.

The U.S. District Court had refused to adjudicate the lawsuit on the grounds that the plaintiffs lack standing or their claims are not ripe.